So much continues to go unreported in Mexico's Narco-ravaged cities. This becomes especially jarring when you've been living in Boston for the better part of the last year. This is what a normal day looks like at home.

Colombians have mostly abandoned stories of drug lords and their escapades, of good guys against bad guys, and traded them for a more sober and conscious approach. They know that violence is not always an end in itself but the reflection of systemic problems. Without adjectives, without qualifications, Colombia is indeed not Mexico.

The mood in Mexico is so depressing that even Elena Poniatowska, the novelist-journalist who chronicled the 1968 massacre of students in Tlatelolco, feels a chill when she talks about the murder of 43 students in Ayotzinapa, who were found burned to death in a municipal trash dump. At 82, Poniatowska keeps on exposing social injustice in Mexico in memorable books like Here's to You, Jesusa, Nothing No One: The Voices of the Earthquake and thousands of journalistic articles in newspapers and magazines all over the world. This year, she won the prestigious Premio Cervantes, the equivalent of the Nobel for Spanish language writers.

When Iguala, Guerrero municipal police and masked men in unmarked black uniforms opened fire on unarmed students from the Ayotzinapa teachers college last September, killing six people and kidnapping 43 students, they lit the fuse of a national crisis.

Here are five things to consider as we discuss this latest insertion of US military personnel, money, and weaponry into, potentially, another Mideast quagmire -- this one being pitched as the "good" or "justified" Iraq War.

That local politicians, other police forces, and more importantly, the surrounding communities can band together in the face of danger insures that we as citizens can depend upon the general safety and security necessary to carry on with our own lives.

There should be no mystery why the White House is talking the talk of reform. Over 80 percent of the American people support medical marijuana, including as of June 30 the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. Over 80 percent also believe that the War on Drugs has failed.

Some would say that instead of providing more funds to care for children, we should crack down by amending the law to allow for summary deportations, and by dramatically increasing our enforcement capabilities at the border. This reflects neither the reality of the problem nor our values as a nation.

Public opinion polls show that the majority of Mexicans believe self-defense is the best way to protect your community and a larger majority sees nothing wrong with vigilante justice. One could argue that such an outcome is predictable in a country where 105,000 people are kidnapped for ransom every year, where criminal groups blackmail one of every 10 Mexicans and 96 percent of recorded crimes go unpunished.

When Barack Obama meets his Mexican and Canadian counterparts in Toluca, Mexico on February 19, you can expect to hear all three insist that the now 20-year-old North America Free Trade Agreement has been an economic success. The facts tell a different story.